Hegel: Incarnation

In Georges Bataille’s view, the Hegelian interpretation of kenotic sacrifice as passage from Spirit to the Speculative Idea effaces the necessarily representational character of sacrifice and the irreducible non-presence of death. But Hegel identifies these aspects of death in the fragments of the 1800 System. In sacrificial acts, subjectivity represents its disappearance via the sacrificed other, and hence is negated and conserved. Sacrifice thus provides the representational model of sublation pursued in the Phenomenology as a propaedeutic to Science. Bataille’s critique (...) clarifies the fragments of the 1800 System, contextualizing Hegel’s rehabilitation of kenotic sacrifice in the Phenomenology. Bataille’s poetics parodies Hegelian kenosis via repetition of material difference, enacting an ecstatic temporality which Hegel perhaps suppresses as the condition of his system. Finally—if Bataille is correct in his assessment—the system would be subjected to a reversal, with radical implications for the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

So comprehensive and meticulous is the scholarship in this study that it would be impossible in a brief review to survey all of its salient claims, let alone to enter into the critical debate which they invite. Brito’s principal objective is expository, viz., “to comment literally, in the light of the System and in particular the diverse elaborations of the Logic, upon the ensemble of Christological texts from the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Berlin Lectures and the Encyclopedia,” and in this (...) way to render more plausible Hegel’s own claim that his work could well be termed a “speculative Good Friday”. Following Hyppolite, Brito’s procedure is both “genetic” and “systematic.” He begins by tracing the origin and development of Hegel’s Christological ideas through the fragments and essays of the pre-Jena period, and against the background of Hegel’s inceptive struggle for a genuine absolute synthesis. Although detailed, this work serves chiefly as a preparation to the core of the exposition, viz., to an understanding of the “true” Hegel in the works of his maturity. Upon the Christological passages in the mature writings, Brito ventures a close textual reading in order to elucidate Hegel’s views specifically on their own terms. At the same time, he seeks to integrate these passages into the structure of the individual works in which they appear, and into the structure of the System as a whole. Both of these tasks are requisite for the “exact” interpretation he presumes to offer, and they complement one another. (shrink)